Informal Learning: Broadening the Spectrum of Corporate Learning

Informal Learning

Broadening the Spectrum of Corporate TrainingHans de Zwart

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Who are you going to listen to?

Things I like to talk aboutBooks, books, books, The Internet Revolution, Popular science,

Free software (think free speech, not free beer), Nintendo (relevant for learning), Michael Jordan, Juggling, Digital civil

rights, The Big Lebowski

You are what you read

Favourite blogsReadWriteWeb, Stephen Downes, iPhone

Club, Wilfred Rubens, Mashable

Favourite magazinesWired, The Economist, Harvard Business

Review, New York Review of Books, Linux Format

The 5 best books I read this yearInnovation to the Core, The Art of Game Design, A Pattern Language, The Road,

The Forever War

My career progression23–29: Physical Education Teacher in the Bijlmer

29-31: Moodle Evangelist at Stoas Learning31-35: Learning Adviser/Innovation Manager at Shell

35-40: Educational Technology Consultant at IBM40-50: Independent Technology Consultant

50+: Professional Dominoes Player

What is it that I do?Innovation Manager for

Global Learning Technologies

Have medicine, need patient

Have patient, need medicine

„Sweating the asset“

"Early experimentation will lead to invaluable experience and fewer

mistakes in the future"

Three things to address here1. What is in our „DNA“?

2. What have we been doing lately?3. Where do I personally see the L&D

function going?

Where are we as a company coming from?

(in the learning space)

Peter Senge – The Fifth DisciplinePersonal mastery, Mental models,

Building shared vision, Team learning, Systems thinking

Addie and ASTD

Arie de Geus – The Living CompanyDe Geus describes three preconditions for knowledge to flourish in an organization:

innovation, social propagation, and mobility.

Betty Collis – Blended Learning

Begin each course with an identified business need or competence gap

Design the course around a multi-step work activity, not around sequences of content

Let the participant and their supervisor complete a learning agreement

Design according to research based, best practice guidelines (web-based)

Build in: peer interaction, use of communinities, supervisor interaction, contacts with experts outside of the course

Integrate evaluation from different perspectives

Coach the supervisors and instructors

Reuse selected assignments

Accelerated LearningTotal learner involvement enhances learning, Learning is not the

passive storage of information but the active creation of knowledge, Collaboration among learners greatly enhances

learning, Activity-centered learning events are often superior to presentation-centered ones, Activity-centered learning events can be designed in a fraction of the time it takes to design

presentation-centered ones

M. David Merrill – First Principles of Instructional

Design

Clark & Mayer – E-learning and the Science of Instruction

Robert F. Mager

Don't forget Organizational Effectiveness

Performance consulting, Lean Six Sigma

and Diversity & Inclusivenessfrom the General Business Principles (moral) viewpoint and from a business effectiveness

point of view

Informal Learning as an attempt at keeping the L&D function relevant

Kapp & O'Driscoll – Learning in 3D7 problems with the way learning is done

The Autonomous Learner Problem"From a tactical perspective, the learning

function appears to be allocating the majority of the effort in the area of least impact."

The Timing Problem"The rapid pace of business almost guarantees

that most formal learning programs will be outdated shortly after launch."

The Packaging Problem"Courses are organized around topics rather than tasks." and "The traditional packaging

of formal learning is not aligned with the time sensitive needs of today's employees."

The Performance Problem"Lack of knowledge and skill is only a small part of the reason that organizations don't

perform as desired."

The Routinization ProblemPeter Drucker: Routinization is a phenomenom

whereby existing industries initially apply radically new technology to automate and accelerate age-old processes and methods.

E-learning modules? Learning Management systems? Virtual

Classroom sessions?

The Transfer Problem"Studies show that as much as 80 to 90

percent of investments in training programs fail to result in behavior change on the job."

The Value Problem"The learning function has very little

understanding as to what executives expect from the learning function, and as a result it often defaults to justifying its existence based

on learning throughput as opposed to performance outcome."

"Collectively, the autonomous learner, timing, and packaging

problems that are not being addressed by the learning function account for the de-selection of at

least 80 percent of the addressable opportunity space for learning."

What are some of the things have we been trying to do?

One-stop-shop for LearningIntegrated triangle with: LMS (SumTotal),

LCMS (Force10) and VLE (Moodle)

Portfolio management with learning reviews

E.g. Aircraft, Assessment Solutions, Business Administration, Business to Business, Chemicals, Commercial Academy, Communications, Contracting and

Procurement, Country Mandatory, Diversity and Inclusion, etc.

Shell WikiQ3 2010: 40.000 articles, 70.000

registered users, 22.000 contributions, Integrated in many learning courses

Shell International Global Networks

Q3 2010: about 40 communities (e.g. Wells Global network, IT 4 Capital Projects, Knowledge Sharing Global Network,

Learning Professionals Online Network), 41.000 registered users, 13.000 active

users, 188.000 views, 4100 contributions

Shell TubeMost played, top three: 25.564, 15.286 and 13.550 views. Most commented, top

three: 181, 160 and 154 comments

Lecture capturingReplacement for a sick facilitator,

Preparations for local versions of the course, Delivery of a completely virtual course,

Creation of learning nuggets

Personal examples (my learning events for the year)

Learning in 3D Reading Group

http://www.hansdezwart.info/lin3drg10 internal participants, 10 external

participants, 43 posts with summaries and reflections, 273 tweets, 47 bookmarks on Delicious, 10 recorded teleconferences

Design time: 8-16 hours

Capability Building Workshop250+ links based on 20 pre-work onepagers

http://bit.ly/capbuild10

The teaching paradox"Constructionism asserts that learning is particularly effective when constructing something for others to experience."

Some of the things we are struggling with right now...

Innovation versus stabilizing the one-stop-shop

Taxonomies and information management/architecture

Everything is Miscellaneous! Tagging middleware? Turning it upside down?

Finding peopleProfiles?! How come LinkedIn is a better way

to find people that work for us, than what we have internally to do that job?

Nine (non-exhaustive) things I see coming in the near future

and a question to you for each of them

1. Creating opportunities to share

Bert De Coutere – Homo CompetensLearn, Do, Share

Q: Have you shared something explicitly last week?

(Have you encouraged somebody else to share in the last week?)

2. Need for a deeper understanding of people

Hans Monderman – Shared SpaceThe best way to slow people down is to

make the road more narrow

Lawei plein in Drachten

John Medina – Brain Rules

Q: Do you feel you are an expert on what makes a human brain tick and where motivation comes from?

3. Videocheck brain rule #10

Nuggets, On demand, Pull

Q: Do you have the capability and the capacity to capture and deliver

video?

4. A further segmentation of audiences (specialization)

Cynefin framework= one way of looking at things

Q: Are you creating multiple learning strategies (i.e. are you

diversifying)?

5. Mobile?

Unique opportunity spaceIt knows who you are, it knows where you are (it even knows what direction you are facing), it allows for collaboration (all your contacts are already there), it is a content

production device (video once more)

Do you own an Android/iOS/Windows 7

smartphone?

If not...how will you participate in and learn about the feasability space for social practice that

this technology creates?

6. A further merging of the Learning function and

Organizational Effectiveness

Focus on performance!Star performers,

Performance Relationship Map

Q: Have you ever started with the best performers to see how something should be done?

7. Turning into community managers

Q: Have you been the steward of an online community of practice?

8. Social Contextualization of Content

You have heard it here first...!

Q: Does your organization have a meta-layer on top of its content/information?

9. Re-use!

David Wiley - Reusability paradox

This presentation does not contain a single original thought![Hans ducks for the tomatoes]

This not a Googlewhack unfortunately

Q: Is your first instinct to find the great learning materials that

already exist before you create your own?

Final question...Is there anyone with 9 affirmitives?

That's all, I hope to see you again! (either virtually or in meatspace)

http://blog.hansdezwart.info

Slides are available online(including links to all the books)

http://www.slideshare.net/hansdezwart

Please about these slides

Image credits

ADDIE: http://bit.ly/9lY5zbFirst principles of instruction: http://bit.ly/bTL98W

Reusability paradox: http://bit.ly/8X3cDHBrain Rules: http://www.brainrules.net/the-rules

Performance relationship map: http://www.partners-in-change.comLecture capturing: http://www.presentations2go.eu/index.php/products

Cynefin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin